CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀one

one. ceria sargen

loc. seagard, the riverlands. 298AC

THIS WAS WHAT she imagined staring Death in the face would feel like.

Daunted, stricken, a flailing hopelessness in the pit of her stomach—all the emotions that came crashing down about your head when you thought you were going to die. But there was also that feeling of teetering, of standing on the precipice of a clifftop, looking down into a bleak, terrifying oblivion, and it was in a split second she had to decide; did she fall with grace? Did she fall screaming? Did she not fall at all?

Ceria felt the weight of a life burning up behind her as the scissors slid shut over the first lock of hair.

She winced, and watched it float like a crow's feather to the ground. It looked oddly mournful at her feet, like the beginning of a funeral shroud. She only felt more and more forlorn as each lock severed from her head joined its brothers at a dark wreath. It felt as though she were hacking away at herself with those scissors, at flesh and muscle and bone, and she heaved suddenly with an unexpected sob, lurching forward to grip the sides of the rough-hewn table.

When Ceria she glanced back at the sullied glass, clouded from dust and gilded insecurity, she saw herself for the first time.

She saw a short girl whose complexion glowed sour yellow in the candlelight. A girl with dark hair hacked brutally to above her ears, leaving her neck prickling with an unfamiliar cold. A girl with shadows arching deep under her tired, tired eyes. She saw chapped lips and sunken cheeks.

She stood for a moment, trying to adjust. Pinching her eyes shut, and with the speed of someone approaching their own execution, Ceria began to slip out of her clothes. Almost at once, the cold leached into her skin, driving up and down her bones with ice knives, but she persevered with gritted teeth until she was bare from the waist up and trembling. Letting out a breath, she gathered herself and reached for the roll of bandage that had been daunting her ever since she'd walked over to the looking glass. She held it to the skin just below her collarbone, and wrapped it round herself once, hands fumbling awkwardly. Once it had completed a full circle around her chest, she tied it in a firm knot. Then it began in earnest, wrapping gauze round and round her torso, inching downward after two layers until finally, she reached the telltale jut of where her hips began, stopped, and knotted the gauze again.

The bandage felt queer against her skin, coarse and grainy. It was cheaply made from the town, spun from spiders' webs, and cut grooves into her flesh. And yet when Ceria looked back up at her reflection in the cracked and dirty looking glass, she stifled a gasp. Her torso was almost shapeless, chest sloping straight into her stomach, curves widening out until she was flat as a whetstone.

Her new clothes lay dauntingly on the chair, a dark heap of leather and buttons, wools and thick paddings. As she pulled them overhead, she relished in the thick warmth that they provided as they settled over her skin. Men's clothing was far more practical than women's. Wasn't winter coming, after all? They lived where frost prickled upon skin, and everyone was so surrounded by ice they had to work not to become ice themselves.

Ceria spared the hut one last look before she made her exit; it was a sliver more than a slum, and it had not been her home long, but it had been her safest in her whole life. With a hollow feeling stirring in her stomach, Ceria dropped her eyes and shut the door, stepping out into the cold of the night.

Nightwing waited for her outside, tethered to her fence. He had been looking more and more miserable and gaunt as the days had worn on; she worried if he was up to the journey. The stallion shuffled and grazed, nibbling at the wet, sour grass as Ceria approached him. When she reached out to pat his neck, he shuddered, whinnied softly, and looked at her with dark, frightened eyes.

"I know, boy," she whispered to him. "I'm scared too." She looked to the southern horizon; black, of course, with stars spilling over the darkness, but the trails of smoke were visible, rising in grey ringlets over the crowd of dark trees to dissipate in the sky. "But we're out of time."

She untied Nightwing's tether deftly; he fumbled, unsure of this new freedom as Ceria attached the leather sack of food to the leather loop on his reins. Gathering herself, she fumbled for a hold on the other side of Nightwing's saddle and hauled herself up, swinging herself round to rest a leg on either side of his back. The stallion shuddered again, hooves pawing at the soft, wet earth, and Ceria looped the reins about her hands, gripping them gingerly.

She slid her feet into the stirrups dangling at Nightwing's side, and gave the horse an uncertain dig with her heels. Nothing. He continued to aimlessly pluck dandelions from the grass, so Ceria cleared her throat, gripped the reins more firmly, and gave the horse a stern dig with her feet.

         ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ Nightwing threw head back and whinnied, and even as Ceria winced at the loud noise that shattered the silence of the night, she grinned. This was it. She'd be long gone by dawn, a cold shadow of a girl who used to live in this wooden shack.

        "Come on, boy," she murmured even as Nightwing broke into a steady trot toward the black trees fanned out duskily on the horizon. "The Wall's waiting for me."

always bind safely guys! you absolutely should not bind with bandages!